Now Hiring Songleaders - Update

Position: Song Leader

Church: Christ The King
Employment Type: WFW (Work For Worship)

Wanted to catch your attention and give everyone a quick update on my commitment to help develop the position of SongLeader. We have had Caleb, Nick and Jared step up to take on greater responsibility in leading portions of the singing during Sunday's worship service. Other team members have also stepped up to lead songs as they have felt led. I have seen this as a blessing and a very positive step in developing our team and I hope to look back on this commitment in an even more positive light a few months from now.

Wondering what it means to me to be a song leader - thought you'd never ask... See this document. I'm still looking for more leaders

I have also seen some very focused and productive rehearsals happening over the last 2 months as we have implemented some healthy adjustments. I thank you for your commitment to them as well. These included:

• Firm Start Time
• Consistent Prayer Time
• Sheet Music Maintenance
• Consistent use of our Audio Monitoring System
• Setup roles defined

I'm always open to more suggestions so please talk to me!!

I thank all those on the music team as it is a blessing to lead such a talented group!!!

"It's all about relationships and simply sharing life..." - Jesus from 'The Shack'

Pot-O-Chili + Team = Good Stuff

Some good food and even better conversation was had when the Music Team gathered this Jan 25, 2009 to discuss where we've been, how we're doing, and where we're going.

If you missed the gathering I've tabulated our Agenda and discussions here. Feel free to leave any general comments you have on this blog and send any specific comments to my email Inbox. Here are my general take-aways for you to browse...

• We've made measurable progress on many items from our 2008 Retreat. PTL!
• Let's use our communication tools even more effectively to help us prepare during the week.
• Let's pray more.
• We feel like having and developing song leaders is a direction we want to go in.
• Let's start on time and use our Sunday practice time most efficiently while looking for other practice options.
• We've done well at including those in the congregation with musical gifts - let's continue to look for even more inclusion opportunities.

I encourage you to browse "Scott's Links of Interest" on the right side of this blog - we talked about them during our meeting and I hope you find them useful! One of note is CCLITV (see the INSTRUCT link).

I'd like to thank all those who attended in body, mind - and spirit! Your focus on our ministry is a blessing to me and to our congregation. Thank You!!

"Hosanna In The Highest"

Why Do We Sing?

Here is a snippet from a Worship Blog about why God wants us to sing. I found them relevant and purposeful so I'm re-posting... (See the original post here) from Bob Kauflin

1. Singing can help us remember words.
   In the church we should use melodies that are effective.We should sing words that God wants us to remember. The lyrics to our songs should reflect the broad themes of Scripture. We should seek to memorize songs.



2. Singing can help us engage emotionally with words.
   We must differentiate between being emotionally moved and spiritually enlightened. Singing should be an emotional event. We need a broad emotional range in our songs.



3. Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity.
   Every voice in the church matters. We should seek to sing songs that unite, rather than divide, the church. Musical creativity in the church has functional limits. We must be clear that it is the gospel, not music, that unites us.

Thoughts?

"1 Chronicles 16:23 Sing to the LORD, all the earth; proclaim his salvation day after day."

Are You Ready?

Your favorite day of the week has arrived and you actually got a good night's sleep! You're at church... the A/V equipment is ready to go - it's now 9:30AM.... now what? Are you ready to start preparing to lead worship? Really? See how many questions you can answer Yes to:

• Are YOU ready - Is your heart prepared to worship? Are you at your music stand? Did you warm up your voice on the way to church, or did you already tune your instrument?
• Is your AREA ready - music stand and mic adjusted/checked? Monitor system working?
• Is your MUSIC ready - Hymnal and other music in your hands? Is the music that we're singing marked?
• Do you know which songs you could LEAD, or which ones you need to rehearse?
• Are those around you ready to go? Can you help them get ready?

These questions let you know what it means to me to be ready at 9:30AM. It really boils down to our team using the limited preparation time we have in the most efficient (and courteous) manner to ensure we are ready to fulfill our Ministry's role to lead the congregation in singing and praising the Lord! Amen.

I offer up some other tips/resources to help you prepare:

Many times the Order of Worship is ready a week or more prior to the service - even before I send out an email saying that it's ready. Put a reminder on your calendar to take a look at the Worshipwebsite to see. Keep a copy of the hymnal to review Hymns at home. Check this blog periodically to see what I've been writing about - the nice thing about blogs is that you can search for content from the past - say you wanted to look back at the highlights from our '08 Music Tream Retreat. See the "Search Blog" box in the top left corner of the blog.

Lastly, I'm always open to feedback and suggestions - please let me know if something is on your mind... Thanks for what you do for our growing ministry!!

"Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord"

Lessons and Carols Service

Lessons and Carols went wonderfully this year. We were introduced to some new carols which I know will be with me for a long time to come. One of my new favorites was 'Infant Holy, Infant Lowly'. Did you have a favorite?

A big thank you to all those who participated in the service and a warm thank you to Caleb for organizing, picking the carol list, and preparing the musicians. We are very blessed by Caleb's work to bring this historic service so close to home.

If you want to read further, a good starting point for information on The Nine Lessons and Carols service at Kings College in Cambridge, England (pictured) can be found here.

Here's a list of Carols we sang this year:

• In The Bleak Midwinter
• Hark The Glad Sound
• Comfort, Comfort Ye My People
• Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming
• The Angel Gabriel
• Infant Holy, Infant Lowly
• Hark! The Herald Angels sing
• Away In A Manger
• Silent Night
• O Come, All Ye Faithful

Ding dong! merrily on high in heav'n the bells are ringing!

Blending Workshop

I have a challenge for our music team - that challenge is for us to sing "...as with one voice..." - 2 Chronicles 5:13. I'd like for everyone on our team to watch this 2 part video and dwell on it in your hearts and minds so that we can focus on this challenge together. At the Music Team Retreat we watched, discussed and reflected on this video and felt that it should be viewed by the entire team!

As you are watching, please focus in on the following:

• Humility
• Blending with your neighbor
• Dialing in
• Singing is to speaking as speaking is to singing
• Awareness
• Conversational

Part 1

Part 2

Please offer your thoughts and inspirations!

To open the gates of trust in God, nothing can replace the beauty of human voices united in song - Taize community

Music Retreat News

I just want to say that our 2008 Music Retreat was a wonderful time of learning, communicating, worshipping, and growing!! We had the opportunity to deepen and refresh our relationships with one another and expand our Music Ministry as a whole.

Here's some lessons learned and takeaways:

• The entire music team should watch the 'Singing As A Group' section of the worship DVD we viewed - look for a future blog entry and link
• Blending is very important and we can improve in this area
• Can we purchase a monitor system so we can hear each other better and thus improve our blending?
• We'd really like to include more special music and musical offerings - let's think about how we can do this.
• How can we use music to make the Kids feel more a part of the service
• Zoe would love to do a Hymn study with the kids
• Let's use the Communion, Offertory and Prelude slots in the service to explore more creative musical offerings. Duets, Instrumentals, Kings Kids offering a song, changing up song arrangements, etc.
• We need to have a point person for leading each song - all other singers will use this song leader to follow

Quotables from the retreat:

• Worship is living in the Beauty of Holiness - great quote Nick!
• Leading is Serving
• Too many I and Me songs bug me!
• I like simple songs that the congregation really knows and can sing
• We are there not to entertain but to come along side
• Scott - I have a new found respect for what you do each week

If you're interested, here's a link to our original Retreat Agenda. BTW - You'll find a comments link below - give it a try!

Worship is living in the Beauty of Holiness - N. Kozel

1982 Hymnal

It is one of my hopes/visions as music director to use, more consistantly, the text (lyrics) from The Hymnal 1982 (more) in our worship services. "How is this different from what we're doing now?", you might ask. Well, we have not been regularly using the '82 Hymnal text directly but have been using the Hymn text derived from CCLI. This has not been an ideal scenario.

My vision is that we be very consistant in both our use of the Hymnal and projection of the text from this Hymnal verbatim. I would like to do this to ensure that the congregation member who just wants to view the projected slides and those in the congregation who would like to read the music from the Hymnal can stay in "perfect harmony"! Recently we've made progress to help accomplish this - but we still need your help/support.

Some 'Success Factors' for this vision include:

• Making sure the music team has access to the Hymal - please keep a copy at home
• Project the Hymn number and verse numbers in the service slides
• Encourage the use of the Hymnal to those at church - having ushers handout Hymnals
• Remind the music director that this is important

Music Team Members: Here's a great site reference for the The Hymnal 1982 that inclues searchable text and midi files of the hymns themselves - please book mark it as it's great place to go if you don't have you hymnal handy!

"More than music we're a team" - Saddleback Church mantra.

Small Group Music

You have musical talents - do you lead music at your small group? Here's some suggestions and points from Rick Muchow:

• Pick well known songs that are easy to sing and don't stop between songs.
• Ask others to "join in when they feel ready"
• Keep in mind that small groups tend to do more listening than singing - and that's OK

Here's some of my "tested" songs for smallgroup:

• Lord I Lift Your Name on High
• God of Wonders
• How Great is Our God
• Let the Glory
• Revelation Song
• Be The Centre
• More Love, More Power
• Humble Thyself
• Sanctuary
• Give Me Jesus

Do you have some favorites at small group? Let me know!

Desire to humbly and passionately praise Him because of who He is.

Goodbye For Now

This post is a tearful farewell to Dan and Kristin who have been such a rich and wonderful part of our church and music ministry. I know I speak for the team when I say that you guys have blessed us in so many ways.

We wish you the best as you turn a life page an embark on the road to parenting and look forward to seeing you when you visit!

Kristin - 'Revelation Song' will always be "Yours"!!

"Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty!"

Taize Music

copyright © Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, 71250 Taizé, France.

We recently introduced a song (Jesus, Remember Me) by the Taize community and I received encouraging feedback. It worked very well during communion (we hummed the melody to start the song) and I'd like to expand our repetoire to include more from the Taize community. These songs from the community reminds me a little of my time (as a youth) singing in Latin with the men and boys choir at Grace Episcopal Church.

'Jesus, Remember Me' http://www.taize.fr/ext/sound/mp3/jesus_remember_me.mp3 http://www.taize.fr/en_article356.html

I like this song as well: 'Dominus spiritus est' http://www.taize.fr/ext/sound/mp3/dominus_spiritus_est.mp3

From the Taize website:

It is important to sing the songs with the same simplicity as in Taizé, so that groups and parishes can discover both the song itself and the prayer it expresses.
There is a profound relation between the musical phrase and these few words that are sung “to infinity”. This long repetition of the same song is linked to a very ancient way of praying, including, for example, the Ave Maria in the West and the Jesus Prayer in the Eastern Churches. This is specifically what the Community wishes to preserve.

copyright © Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, 71250 Taizé, France.

Link to the Taize Prayer and Song http://www.taize.fr/en_rubrique12.html

Do you recall singing the song 'Jesus, Remember Me' - what did you think?

Lunch and Learn

What a great concept - eating and learning!! I'm trying to get the following idea off the ground: Bring together some local worshipleaders, full time and otherwise, once a month (or every 2 months) to eat lunch and share ideas about worship leading. My thought are to:

• Invite 5-10 Worship Leaders


• Rotate the responsibilities of picking where to eat and what 2 or 3 topics to focus on

I've found a source for some good topics to jump start us: http://reson8.org/2007/worship-leading-essentials-5/

A sort of Minister's roundtable if you will. Have you done this successfully?

Welcome

Hello and welcome! Here you'll find a published slice of my world including ideas, reflections, announcements, and musings on our music ministry and being a worship leader. I'm the music director at a small church in Harrisonburg and I'm looking to use this blog to reach out to you and hopefully provide some relevant information and ideas.

I encourage you to browse some of my 'Links of Interest' or leave me a comment - it's much more interesting to read what you think - I already know what I think :-)

Blessings to you!